


The Damnation of Regulus Black

by NoelleZingarella



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Action/Adventure, Dark, Gen, Horror, Legends, Psychological Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-27 02:16:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19781185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoelleZingarella/pseuds/NoelleZingarella
Summary: Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.In the middle of his youth, Regulus Black finds himself in a dark wood wandering, with only Lucius Malfoy to help him find his way back home.





	The Damnation of Regulus Black

No on ever really thought it was a good idea, but that had never stopped them before. Every summer, the newest addition to the pureblood party at the Malfoy home on the Isle of Man had to take his turn. This year, that unfortunate boy was Regulus Black. He should have realized from the sniggering of the older boys at the end of the year House picnic that he was in for trouble.  
  


He had been cautiously excited to finally receive the long-awaited invitation to the Malfoy summer party. Fifteen was young for such an honor, and he strongly suspected that the invitation was issued due to the fact that Lucius was actively courting his cousin Narcissa. This was the next necessary step towards distinguishing himself, the next step to entering the sphere of influence he hoped to attain, and it was one that he frequently doubted his own ability to achieve. He lacked all of his disgraced older brother’s charm and style. But as his parents’ favorite son, he would be handed every advantage that they could give him. By keeping silent when others were wont to ramble, he had learned to appear to possess more intelligence than he had any right to claim. His features were handsome enough and his coloring dark enough that he could play the role of the strong, silent type rather well for his age.  
  


At the current moment, however, it was requiring all of his concentration not to humiliate himself by vomiting all over his robes, his broom, and himself as he swerved in and out of the circle of stone arches. Earlier that afternoon, Vincent and Gregory had informed Regulus that he was to be the evening’s entertainment. Regulus had spent enough time observing the older boys to know that he was not being given a choice and so, he had resigned himself to whatever trial was to come.  
  


This trial turned out to be flying his broom in and out of a circle of stone archways while the rest of the young men jeered from the sidelines, critiquing everything from his form, his face, and his family lineage—which was particularly preposterous considering that everyone present was a cousin of some sort. Oh, and just to make it more interesting, every twenty or so times he completed a circuit, he had to pause long enough to take a swig from a bottomless goblet of lemonade and firewhiskey before he could continue. His tongue was thick and sour from the sticky stuff, and his stomach was churning in protest as the grass flew by underneath him, a sickly streak of green in the weird light of the setting sun.  
  


He had been flying this path for at least half an hour and he had lost all track of how many times he had completed the circle. Vincent was the official counter for the trial and Regulus seriously doubted Vincent’s ability to count into three digit numbers. Even as Regulus made an heroic effort to continue his fool’s errand, he knew it was far more likely that he would faint before Vincent figured out how to reach the number six hundred sixty-six.  
  


Time blurred into an endless round of streaking grass and nausea, punctuated by the nonsensical jeering of the other young men. Pinpricks of light and dark appeared across Regulus’s field of vision and, although he redoubled his efforts to maintain his seat on the broom, it was a doomed mission, and he knew it. Just as the sun disappeared beneath the horizon, he lost control of the broom and went crashing to the earth, skidding to a stop in a crumpled heap in front of Lucius Malfoy. He barely had time to raise his head before he emptied the contents of his stomach onto Lucius’s perfectly buffed shoes. The first splash hit the mark, but Lucius managed to jump back before the rest of the flood came forth.  
  


“Release your impurities, Regulus. It’s good for you,” Lucius remarked, flicking his wand at his shoes to vanish the mess. “But well done. Most of these fools weren’t able to make it nearly as far as you did.” The others laughed and elbowed each other.  
  


“I think he might have done the whole bit,” Vincent said. “I might’ve lost count though.”  
  


This comment brought another round of laughter and Regulus dropped onto his side as his vomiting finally stopped. He tried to breath slowly, but he couldn’t stop his panting and he felt dizziness again threatening to overtake him. At least he was already on the ground. Gradually the world stopped spinning and Lucius stooped to offer Regulus his hand. Regulus took it, his own hand shaking, and he allowed Lucius to pull him into a sitting position. When Regulus did not immediately fall down, Lucius handed him a glass of water.  
  


“Drink it slowly, or you’ll be heaving it back up,” Lucius said, laughing.  
  


“I’ll try to miss your shoes this time,” Regulus muttered, but he drank slowly as instructed. He kept sitting on the ground though, letting the conversation wash over him while he caught his breath.  
  


“Maybe you should try out for the Quidditch team, Reg,” Vincent said.  
  


“I don’t think so. No really my thing.” Feeling steadier, he carefully pushed himself up off of the ground. The world spun again, but he was able to stay upright. He stared at the stone archways to give himself something immobile to focus on. They loomed over him, and the last rays of the setting sun bounced off them, somehow ominously. Without realizing he was doing it,, his unsteady legs carried him to the stones as though compelled by some strange, unknown force. When he reached the tallest of them, his hand came up on its own and rested on the face of the rock. It pulsed, hot, somehow alive and, when he tried to pull his hand away, he could not. His hand stuck fast and, the longer it was in contact with the rock, the more painful the burning sensation became.  
  


“Lucius?” Regulus said, trying to keep the sound of panic out of his voice.  
  


“What is it, Reg?” Lucius asked, as though to a child.  


  
“My hand is stuck.”  


  
“Don’t be ridiculous.”  


  
“I’m not! It’s stuck and it hurts!” The pitch of Regulus’s voice had climbed three octaves by the end of that statement.  


  
Lucius rolled his eyes and sauntered over to Regulus. He grabbed the boy’s arm and started to pull. A frown crossed his lips as he discovered that Regulus was, in fact, not being ridiculous.  
  


“Who put the sticking charm on Reg?” Lucius demanded irritably, as he tried to jerk Regulus away from the rock.  


  
The stone in front of them began to glow blood-red and, while the other men gazed on in frozen horror, Regulus and Lucius fell through it, into an endless black abyss.

  
  
  
  
Regulus fell for so long that he forgot what it was like to not be falling. He had no idea if Lucius was still beside him, no idea if there was any bottom to this hole--although, at this point he was certain that he would be dead if he ever encountered it. A giddy thought drifted through his mind that perhaps he would fall all the way through the earth and out the other side, into space. It was so dark that he could no longer tell if his eyes were open or closed as he hurtled downwards. He thought he perhaps had his arms and legs splayed out in a futile attempt to slow his descent, but there was nothing to catch onto, only empty space. Maybe he’d already fallen through the earth and into space, who knew?  
  


All at once, his limbs were numb with cold and his chest ached as his lungs tried to process the frozen air. Tears stung his eyes and he tried to breath through his mouth instead. It was almost comical how his body was trying to keep itself alive long enough to be smashed into pieces at the end of this fall. But try it did, and there was not much he could do to stop himself from breathing.  
  


Just as he thought that he could stand the cold no longer, he hit a patch of air so horribly hot that he feared he was on fire. It was damp as well, and he felt that he was drowning as his battered lungs fought to breathe. He covered his face with his hands, wondering how much hotter it could get before his skin melted off. Could such things happen? Surely not, surely that was impossible. Sweat poured down, stinging his eyes, and he tried in vain to wipe it away.  
  


And then he was lying on the ground--no a floor--and everything felt like it was rushing past him, but his hands told him that he was finally still. It was a wood floor from the feel of it and his fingers picked up stray splinters as he splayed them out over the blessed solidness. He opened his eyes and when the world finally stopped spinning around him, he could make out a point of light in the room. It glinted off of Lucius’s blond hair, and as Regulus blinked a few more times, he could make out a rusted oil lamp standing on a hulking table beyond them.  
  


He gradually became aware of a rhythmic creaking sound coming from the direction of the oil lamp. Creak…creak….creak…but it didn’t sound like footsteps.  
  


“Lucius?” Regulus croaked out, his voice scratchy and parched.  
  


“Shh!” Lucius hissed back, taking a swing at Regulus that missed by a wide margin. Lucius was staring, wide-eyed in the direction of the creaking.  


  
Creak…creak…creak…  


  
Regulus turned his head gingerly towards the creaking, blinking hard in an attempt to force his eyes to focus. On his eye level was the curved base of a wooden rocking chair. It was moving back and forth, causing the creaking. A pair of withered feet sat on the floor as well, and Regulus’s eyes followed them up a pair of equally withered legs, to a sunken chest, and up to a face more ancient than any he’d ever seen. The skin of the face was stretched taut over its skull; so much so that if it hadn’t been for the sallow color of the skin and the presence of a nose, Regulus would have thought it that it was an exposed skull. A pair of beady, rat-like eyes peered out of this face, and its gash of a mouth was twisted into a satire of a smile. Wisps of dirt-colored hair mottled the top of the creature’s head. It was dressed in rags of some nondescript color, and it’s gnarled hands rested on the arms of the rocking chair.  
  


Gradually, Regulus became aware that the creature was humming tunelessly, slightly out of time with the creak of the chair. For some strange reason, his eyes were drawn to one of the bony fingers, perhaps because it was moving out of time with the rest of the thing. It tapped silently, up and down, on the edge of the arm of the chair, its nail hanging on by a thread of dry skin. Regulus felt another wave of nausea, and he quickly averted his eyes, trying to find something else to look at.  


  
Although he could feel the thing’s beady eyes staring at him, he let his eyes drift up the wall and over to an oddly plain door, the only other thing in the room that he could see. It was brown and unmarked, with a knob sitting quietly, waiting to be turned. Above the door hung a framed piece of needlework, letters done in tiny crosses, spelling out some phrase that Regulus didn’t understand.  


  
“Lasciate ogni speranza…” Lucius whispered hoarsely.  
  


Regulus’s eyes snapped to Lucius, who still motioned for silence. Lucius slowly sat up and, when the thing in the chair kept rocking, Regulus followed suit. They had just reached a kneeling position when the door burst open, and a group of black, insectoid creatures bounded through it. They had too many legs and arms, and their eyes were large and segmented, reflecting the dim light of the oil lamp. They brandished axes in their many hands, which they immediately put to work on the thing in the chair.  
  


The creature’s limbs rolled across the floor, but instead of blood, worms, bugs, and other small vermin crawled out of the mess. Lucius and Regulus drew back in horror, huddling together, but the insects paid them no mind, vanishing as soon as their work on the other creature was finished. Regulus hadn’t realized that he had closed his eyes or that he was holding his breath, until he felt so light headed that he had to gasp for air. When he opened his eyes, the room was silent again except for the infernal creaking of the chair. The head of the dismembered creature sat grinning on the seat of the chair, its beady eyes boring into Regulus’s.  


  
“Don’t worry boys,” the head said—how could it talk without a body? “It happens every day.”  
  


That was quite as much as the young men could take. Lucius grabbed Regulus by the arm and the pair of them bolted out the door, not caring what might be on the other side as long as they were out of the room and away from that horrible thing.  


  
They ran until they were both panting for air and Regulus had a stitch in his side so painful that it brought tears to his eyes. When they finally stopped to catch their breath, Regulus realized that they were in a forest of black pine trees whose tops stretched up as far as they could see, obscuring a strange red sky.  


  
“Lucius,” Regulus panted, “where are we?”  


  
Lucius only shook his head. “I don’t know, Reg.”  


  
“But that thing, those monsters, the sign, what is it?”  


  
Lucius glared at the younger boy and snapped, “I said I don’t know.”  


  
Regulus took the hint and held his tongue, although something about the way Lucius was so agitated made him think that Lucius knew more than he was saying. 

  
  
When their eyes had adjusted to the dim red light filtering through the pine needles, they noticed a beaten dirt path under their feet. It was narrow, but it seemed to be the only way through the trees, Without stopping to discuss the decision, Lucius started up the path, his step so hurried that Regulus suspected that Lucius was as afraid as he was. He followed behind so as not to lose the only familiar thing in this strange place. The pine trees closed in on either side of the path, and the path turned so frequently and so sharply that they could not see around any of the bends in it. Soon the boys could see only a few feet ahead of them. The arms of the trees stretched out to them like jilted lovers, and the needles scratched at the young men’s hair and skin. At last the path ended altogether, and they halted, unsure where to go. The trees pressed in on them and again they huddled together, if only to know that there was another human being in this place.

  
  
Suddenly Lucius started rambling quietly, “My grandfather told me once that in the middle of the night in a thick forest like this, all the trees inhale and people who are as far in as we are suffocate because there’s no free air to breathe.”

  
  
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Regulus objected, but his voice sounded lame even to his own ears.

  
  
Something seemed to snap inside Lucius and he whipped out his wand, aiming it at Regulus, his eyes blazing with fury. “Don’t call me ridiculous!” he shouted.

  
  
Regulus held his hands up in front of him, “I didn’t say that you…”  


  
“Shut up! Don’t you know where we are?”  


  
“No….”  


  
“We’re in Hell you idiot! Lasciate ogni speranza, give up all hope, you who enter here, that’s what was on the wall in that hag’s house! We’re as good as dead! We’re worse than dead!”  


  
Lucius whirled around, his eyes almost rolling in his head, and he took off in a sprint, heedless of the path as he blasted tree branches out of his way with his wand. This seemed like a terrible idea to Regulus, but he had no desire to be left alone in whatever this strange place was, so he quickly drew his own wand and ran after Lucius, keeping up with the taller man the best he could.

  
  
Perhaps due to his state of panic, Lucius ran without tiring for far longer than Regulus could manage. The stitch in his side returned and he was wheezing, his eyes on the ground under his feet rather than on Lucius. Every few minutes, the thought of getting lost here alone would spur him faster, but his body was quickly approaching its breaking point. 

  
  
Just as Regulus thought that he was about to collapse, he ran smack into Lucius’s back, and fell backwards onto the sandy ground. He lay there for a moment, the wind knocked out of him. As he stared helplessly up at the red sky, he had a wild thought that maybe he would never breathe again. Gradually, his breath came back to him, and he spread out his fingers, childishly glad to feel something soft and familiar. He picked up a handful of sand and let it run through his fist, before pulling himself back to his current disaster. 

  
  
Sand dunes spread out as far as he could see. The forest was gone. He shook his head at the constantly shifting landscape, and got to his feet. When he turned his eyes to Lucius though, he saw that Lucius was shaking his head, muttering “No” over and over again under his breath.

  
  
Fear began to build in Regulus’s stomach again, and he reluctantly turned his head to see whatever it was that Lucius was staring at. He involuntarily took a step backwards at the sight of the horde advancing on them. It stretched the length of the horizon, a slow-moving mass of monstrous things. Ears with legs and knives for bodies, bodies broken like eggs with wriggling things inside them, fish-like things with elephant trunks, internal organs millions of times too large and sporting eyes—and all moving at a relentlessly adagio pace, all coming, all unavoidable. 

  
  
The young men stood frozen, whether from fear or from the laws of the place, Regulus had no idea. He willed his legs to move, but they would not; he willed his hand to raise is wand, but it would not. He could only watch as the mass of creatures advanced, grotesquely silent and evil. It was almost a relief when they reached him, and he was somehow not surprised when both he and Lucius were hoisted aloft and carried above the black wave of fiends like sacrificial lambs.

  
  
Regulus was now past fear. He had no idea what was happening to Lucius, as the other man had been shuttled away from him. He was finally alone, and he only hoped that his death would be swift and somewhat painless. With casual indifference, he noted the lake of fire that the mass of creatures was baring him towards. He knew, even before they started pushing him forward, that this was his destination, and he found himself wishing that he knew how to pray. The Black family was above such mundane things as religion, and so he had never learned how to do such a thing.

  
  
In latter days, when Regulus experienced the Cruciatus curse for the first time, he would reflect that it paled in comparison with the fiery lake. As he plunged beneath the surface of the flames, his mouth opened in a reflexive attempt to scream. This only allowed the flames to rush into his throat and lungs, to extend the torment to all parts of his body. Pain consumed him, but the fire left him whole to continue the torture. His last rational thought was that surely this torture could not last much longer. Surely it would be over soon. Surely…  


  
Regulus was lying on his stomach again, his hands and face buried in the thick grass near the stone circle. He had never before felt such pleasure at such a small thing as drawing a breath and he let out a short, slightly hysterical laugh at the sensation. As he opened his eyes, he saw Lucius lying a few feet away from him. The young men from the party stood around them, and their shouts of confusion and disbelief echoed in Regulus’s ears.  


  
Rolling onto his back, Regulus noted that clouds now covered the darkening sky. The sun was down and the stars were hidden, but a mercifully cool breeze blew up around them. A few drops of rain fell, blessedly cold on his skin. He laughed again, simply glad to be alive and not in pain. His laughter died on his lips, though, when his eyes fell on the stone arch that had caused all the trouble. It was glowing red again. Regulus scrambled backwards, trying to run before he had even managed to stand.  


  
Before the stunned group of revelers, a band of withered, black-clad beings emerged from the arch. They looked more human than anything Regulus had seen in the underworld, but they moved at an infernally slow pace, like the horde of demons. Lightning split the sky, and the creatures turned away from the young wizards, indifferent to their existence.  


  
Regulus stared after the things, his brain working feverishly. Every time he blinked, the things would shift, briefly appearing to be fiends rather than men. What would happen if they escaped? What had he and the others done?  


  
“Stop them!” Regulus shouted with more authority than he had thought he possessed.  


  
Vincent and Gregory stepped forward, wands brandished at the infernal men, but they were thrown to the ground, swatted like flies. The things shuffled silently past them, and no one else could find the courage to mount a second attack. As the rain fell, the men escaped, never to be found.

**Author's Note:**

> A million thanks to the amazing Pixileanin for beta-ing this story!!
> 
> For this challenge, I was given the first and last sentence of this story, as well as the characters Regulus Black and Lucius Malfoy as young men. This is what I came up with from those prompts.
> 
> "Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate," or "Abandon all hope — Ye Who Enter Here" and the phrase "In a dark wood wandering" are from Inferno by Dante Alighieri. 
> 
> The descriptions of the things that carry Regulus and Lucius to the lake of fire were inspired by the Hell panel in The Garden of Earthly Delights Triptych by Hieronymus Bosch and the image on the banner for this story is taken from that painting.
> 
> The idea of opening a gate to Hell by flying a broom through a group of stone arches was inspired by a legend that is told in the town that I hail from.


End file.
